I wanted to be a cool kid, Apple said no

It’s been a crazy few days in the Flash and iPhone world. If the people involved were the citizens of a small country, you can bet there would be some burned effigies scarring the streets.

What’s the dirt? Well, last Thursday at their iPhone 4.0 event, Apple announced a shiny new iPhone operating system and the fact that they will no longer accept iPhone applications in their store that were developed using non-Apple software development kits.

For some time, Flash lovers had been lamenting the lack of Flash support on Apple’s mobile devices. This was most noticeable in their web browser but also affected the stand-alone applications in the app store.

Then Adobe announced a breakthrough: their new CS5 Flash applications would be able to compile iPhone-compatible apps! Flash and Flex developers around the world (count me in with them) rejoiced like teenagers invited to the cool kids’ party. We all waited in eager anticipation for the party to start (i.e. the shipping date of Adobe’s CS5 Suite) until ‘daddy’ Steve Jobs came home and grounded us, probably forever.

So now we’re in the midst of an uproar. Forums, tweeters, bloggers, and Facebook groups are all weighing in on the issue. Many are very insulted. Even Adobe’s own platform evangelist directed some very colourful language toward Apple. People love to hate the guys with the power, especially when they use that power. Thankfully there are a few level heads out there at the same time.

Maybe if we hadn’t been staring at CS5’s iPhone development carrot for so long we wouldn’t be so mad that Apple is taking it away. As a professional Flash developer, I respect the intention behind many of the arguments wanting Apple to allow for a more open platform. I also respect the passion of the Flash developers, because many of us would likely compare ourselves to artists, with Flash being our medium of choice. We feel hurt when someone wants to take away something that gives us so much creative freedom.

But let’s not take it personally. Apple is not anti-developer and anti-consumer as the Facebook group would have you believe. They’re not out to get anyone, offend anyone, or destroy any particular platform. They shouldn’t be expected to do things “for the common good” as some people want. It would have been nice if they would have developed this new policy sooner, certainly, but it does take time to get decisions made sometimes. Apple is a shareholder-held company that exists primarily to make money.

They know how to make money by using market positioning. When their ‘suits’ sat down to figure out their official policy, they knew there would be an uproar. They also knew they didn’t want the iPhone to be just another platform that plays the same applications that every other platform plays. Apple has historically prospered when they strove to be different. So, as the level-headed blogger pointed out, “it makes sense from Apple’s perspective — and it was Apple’s decision to make.” They chose to be the ‘other’ platform, and to reap the consequences.

The Facebook group goes so far as to accuse Apple of being anti-competition. I ask them: isn’t every company that wants market share anti-competition in some way? You can’t paint Apple as the bad guys just because they are winning the smart-phone competition right now. In the same way, you can’t fault Adobe for being tops in the web multimedia game. If you want competition, go out there make products that are better than theirs which attract their own market share. That’s real competition, and that’s what Apple is trying to do.

So whether you agree with Apple or not, let’s just see how it pans out. If they were wrong, then their market share will suffer and they may or may not change their policy. If they were right, then iPhone will remain a popular product with a user base that actually wants to be different, and maybe Adobe will have to face the fact that Flash isn’t supported as widely as they would like. Either way, technologies will continue to change until the end of the age. May the best product win, and may the best developers adapt.